A journal of peers
Robert D. Heverly | TLT President's Report September 2013
Thanks to a hard-working team of editors, Tribology Transactions has developed into a signature STLE service.
Tribology Transactions publishes research on friction, wear, lubricants, materials, machines, moving components and much more!
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NEXT MONTH TLT CELEBRATES an important milestone—10 years of publishing excellence. In addition to its regular content, the commemorative October issue will include retrospectives, reader comments and a special tribute to advertisers.
TLT focuses on best practices in lubrication engineering and targets primarily the industrial side of STLE’s membership. But this month I’d like to talk about an equally important STLE publication—
Tribology Transactions, our bimonthly peer-reviewed journal.
Launched more than 50 years ago,
Transactions services the 20 percent of STLE’s membership involved in academic and corporate research.
Transactions is an important publishing outlet for these thought leaders and serves the research branch of the lubricants community through the high quality of its papers. If you’re an STLE member, you have free online access to more than 50 years’ worth of
Transactions papers and can receive a print subscription at a discount.
Transactions contains experimental and theoretical research on friction, wear, lubricants, lubrication materials, machines, moving components and much more—from the macro to the nano scale. As with most journals, it’s accessed primarily online, although a significant number of subscribers continue to receive the print edition. Many institutions either subscribe directly to
Transactions or receive access to it through an online sales package.
Transactions made a quantum leap forward in January 2004 when STLE entered into a partnership with Taylor and Francis (T&F), a U.K.-based publisher founded in 1798. T&F produces more than 1,750 journals globally and has offices around the world, including Philadelphia where
Transactions is produced. Partnering with T&F, STLE transformed
Transactions from a print-only book to an online publication, a trend that began to emerge in journal publishing in the late 1990s.
The print-to-digital transition was a Herculean task that was supervised by then-editor- in-chief Andrew Jackson, an STLE past president. As part of this process, Andy changed the manuscript-submission process from paper to electronic, making it easier for authors to submit and reviewers to review. The digital system also allows
Transactions to post accepted papers online weeks before the print version is issued, a benefit for researchers, authors and STLE.
That’s not to say that getting published in
Tribology Transactions is easy. Only 56 percent of papers submitted to
Transactions are accepted, an industry standard that ensures quality as well as quantity.
Today the journal is managed by professor Farshid Sadeghi with Purdue University, who has assembled a first-rate staff of associate editors, many of them overseas based. These AEs and their reviewers evaluate nearly 500 papers annually; it’s a daunting, time-consuming assignment but one that’s critically important to the publication’s success.
Their work is evident. Among the key areas where
Transactions shines:
Impact Factor. This metric is a journal’s Holy Grail and reflects the number of times papers in a particular journal are cited in other journals.
Transactions’ Impact Factor has risen from less than .6 in 2010 to .854 in 2011 and .914 in 2012. We’re looking to crack the 1.0 barrier in the next 18 months and keep improving.
Full text downloads. The number of papers downloaded by researchers has consistently risen during the past three years, a testament to the quality of our journal. For 2013 we are projecting more than 60,000 full text downloads!
Number of days to a decision. Transactions was in crisis mode a decade ago when the journal was bogged down in a paper-based process where reviewing the manuscript and reaching a decision could take up to a year. Today the number of days to a decision is down to 110. Reducing it any further likely would compromise the quality of the reviews.
So please join me in saluting Dr. Sadeghi and his team for continuously improving the systems and processes that go into creating one of STLE’s signature member benefits. While
Tribology Transactions might not be STLE’s highest-profile service, for our thought leaders it certainly ranks as one of our most important.
Representing the Houston area, Rob Heverly is a technical sales representative for Vanderbilt Chemicals, LLC, in Norwalk, Conn. You can reach him at rheverly@vanderbiltchemicals.com.